Tag Archives: Hormonal Pollution

Joan Ruderman will be giving a talk titled, “Hormonally Active Pollutants: What Are They, What Can They Do, and How Do We Know They’re Out There?” Here is a summary of her talk:

Over the past few decades, an increasing number of chemicals that were designed for one purpose have now been found to have the surprising, additional ability to mimic hormones like estrogen. Examples of such chemicals, often called environmental estrogens, include certain pesticides, plasticizers, detergents, and compounds added to personal care products. There is growing concern that everyday exposures to these chemicals, and to others yet to be discovered, are contributing to increases in reproductive abnormalities, infertility, and estrogen-dependent cancers in both males and females. Previously identified environmental estrogens show little structural similarity to estrogen, making it impossible to predict simply on the basis of structure alone which other chemicals may also be estrogenic. Transgenic zebrafish embryos can play a unique role in screening chemicals that mimic estrogen.

The website for this lecture series can be found here. Hope to see you there! ~YK